Adrian Belew warms up his act here for Europe
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Adrian Belew warms up his act here for Europe
By Jordan Oakes
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
2006-03-23
Musician Adrian Belew
Will the real Adrian Belew please warm up?
The venerable guitarist, songwriter and now painter will be coming to
town with his self-proclaimed power trio.
"We're just doing four warm-up dates, St. Louis being one of them,"
Belew says.
Then the band will pack up its instruments and head overseas. After a
lengthy tour of Europe and Australia, they'll return - revved up - to
America: "I want to bring the power trio back to the States."
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Belew means that in more ways than one. From the beginning, the
musician whose first instrument was the drums has been a self-starter
and innovator. And his whimsy-prone ambition has always stayed a step
ahead of his fans' expectations.
It's a journey that spans his work with Frank Zappa; his role in
reshaping (along with Robert Fripp) King Crimson from a '70s prog-rock
artifact to a blueprint for guitar-based avant-garde music; and his
Beatles-style pop experiments, alone and with the Bears.
These days, Belew is exploring the live possibilities of the rock trio.
He's divided his recent studio work into three albums to show the
different sides of himself.
Last year's "Side One" combined pop songs such as "Ampersand" with the
sort of weirder stuff you'd expect from a musician who doesn't so much
caress his guitar as argue with it.
"'Side Two' is a totally different kind of music," Belew says. "It has
synthesizers and drum machines - almost like my own version of DJ
music."
The upcoming "Side Three," though, will be a feast of leftovers.
"It's a lot of different material that didn't really fit in the other
categories," he says.
But Belew is not easy to categorize. He's that rare breed of musician
who, like Tom Verlaine and Nils Lofgren, is renowned for his guitar
chops but can write a mean song. In particular, he has mixed and
matched genres, from pop-rock to avant-garde, with ease - and now an
easel.
"I think these days my fans have realized that I multitask," Belew
says. "I like to do a lot of different things."
What some fans may not realize is that for the past couple of years,
he's been mastering a new kind of task: painting.
Examples of Belew's work, which is decidedly abstract and menacing, can
be found on the front of his recent CDs.
"My painting is very much like my music, in that I'm always
discovering," says Belew, who's never had a guitar lesson. "I don't
know in technical terms how to do something, or what I'm doing. I just
discover things. That's the same way I've approached guitar all my
life."
In the long arc of his career, Belew has gone from drummer's hide to
artist's canvas. But deep down, he's all about the music.
"What I'm doing now is warming up my power trio for Europe and
Australia," he says. "I think the date at Blueberry Hill will be a
really good one in the sense that we're all anxious to play again. Even
though it's a warm-up for Italy, we're going to play our hearts out."